Cold Tea
by Thagguy
Summary: In the last days of winter, two girls have tea.


On a chilly day in last gasps of winter, two girls sat for tea on a small patio.

One sat with ramrod-straight posture and drank with perfect etiquette. Her ponytail sat on her shoulder, cascading down her side like a silver waterfall. As she moved her arm, her hair shimmered in silver ringlets as the light caught it. She raised her teacup to her mouth and took a perfect, tiny, polite sip. Only the twinkle of her eye, and a mischievous tugging at the corner of her mouth, betrayed how at ease she truly was.

Her tea partner, in contrast, gave the opposite impression. Still in her school uniform, she gesticulated wildly with a teacup, and despite it being nearly full and leaving a trail of steam in its wake, she didn't spill a drop. She had short, messy black hair with a purplish tint, and her legs were crossed flippantly in violation of tea ceremony etiquette.

"So then I said to her, 'Look, it's just a stuffed animal, lady. If the kid wants the thing so bad, she can have it.'"

The silver-haired girl chuckled demurely. "I'm sure that little girl was very happy."

"Yeah, she was. How do kids go from throwing a tantrum to squeeing so fast?" She paused. "I still wanted to get it for you, though." Absently, she rubbed a ring, set with a single garnet.

The other girl noticed this, and frowned slightly. She placed the teacup onto her saucer with a tink, and set it on the table. She gently took the other black haired girl's hands in hers.

"Kirika," she said. "I know you want to do things for me. But don't feel disappointed because you couldn't." She smiled softly. "The fact that you would give it up for that child means even more to me than if you had bought it for me."

Kirika blushed lightly. "W-well," she said, and looked at the ground.

The doorbell rang. The girls looked up.

"That your dad?"

The silver girl shook her head. Her father, a Councilor in the National Diet, was never home this early. And if he was, he or one of his staff would have called long before he arrived.

"No, Mr. Kiro usually brings Father around the back, and he doesn't ring the doorbell..."

She stood up. Kirika grabbed her hand.

"Just let the butler get it," the girl whined, "Your tea's gonna get cold."

However, she didn't protest when she was pulled out of her chair by her silver-haired companion.

"Mr. Hiroshi is doing Father's taxes today," the silver-haired girl said, "And besides, I have you to protect me, don't I?"

Kikira smiled broadly now. "Yeah. You do."

The two girls made their way to the door. The silver-haired girl pressed a button on a panel, and a small screen powered on, revealing a pretty, black-haired girl, in Kirika's grade judging from her uniform, with a bored expression.

"Hello," she said without preamble, "Is Kirika Kure here? I'm sorry, but she left her laptop at school-" she held up a laptop in a plain tan slipcover- "and I was told I might be able to find her here."

The silver-haired girl glanced at Kirika. "Yeah, that's mine," she said with a little confusion, "I swore I put it in my backpack, though-"

"So can I bring this up to you, or should I just leave it here?" the girl said over the intercom, a note of annoyance creeping into her voice.

The silver-haired girl didn't realize she still had her finger on the microphone button; the girl must have heard Kirika over the intercom. "No, we'll buzz you up. I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

"It's not a problem," the bored-looking girl said, and then the feed winked off.

"She didn't have to come here," Kirika said, "She could have just left it at school and I'd pick it up tomorrow. I don't know why she has to give us attitude."

The other girl didn't respond to that, except to squeeze Kirika's hand a little.

They heard footsteps coming up the steps, and then the girl arriving at the door. She knocked twice.

The silver-haired girl waited a polite moment then started to open the door. "Thank you for bringing Kirika's laptop. I'm afraid I didn't catch your na-"

When the door opened fully, she was staring down the barrel of a large handgun.

The silver-haired girl had an instant to recognize this fact before her brains were blown out the back of her skull.

"Oriko!" Kirika shrieked. In a flash of purple light, huge hooked claws sprouted from the back of her wrists, and her school uniform was replaced by a high-collared trenchcoat over a men's dress shirt, a red tie, and a white skirt.

Time slowed, and Oriko's body, nearly on the ground, became sluggish, flecks of brain and skull pinwheeling lazily through the air. On the girl's forearm behind the gun, Kirika saw that a small shield had materialized. In the slowed time, she could see gears turning within it, and a latch about to catch. She was a Magical Girl, but that didn't matter to Kirika as much as what she'd done. "I'll kill you!" Kirika shrieked like a feral animal, and jumped, claws-first, at the girl in the doorway.

The latch in the shield caught. Time stopped. Time resumed.

There was a brief, sharp burst of purple, and Kirika went limp mid-leap. The black-haired girl stepped to the side, and Kirika's body- back in her school uniform- slammed into the steps with a sickening crack and tumbled the rest of the way down.

Homura watched the body fall. Her expression never changed. She didn't bother checking it for a pulse; she knew she hit the Soul Gem, and saw it shatter. She couldn't be more sure of Kirika's death if she had thrown her into the sun.

The other one was different. Dropping the laptop carelessly, she walked over to Oriko's body. Her face was still frozen in surprise, though the back of her head was a ruin. A large pool of blood was already spreading, and soaking into the silver hair. With cold professionalism, Homura searched the corpse.

No Soul Gem.

Satisfied, Homura nodded to herself, and stood up. Oriko may not have Contracted yet, but after that one disastrous timeline, she couldn't afford to risk it, no matter how unlikely a repeat of that chain of events might be. She just needed to stop into the security room and destroy the recordings of this incident, and she would be on her way. As the first of the police sirens reached her ears, Homura vanished without a trace.

The Councilor came home late that night the sound and flash of police sirens and the sight of caution tape. As he walked up to his home, he was greeted by a police detective, his butler, and two body bags containing his daughter and her best friend.


End file.
